Two Beers and a Pretzel

Delft is the home of Vermeer (painter), the former house of the royal family, and the former home of the Dutch East India Company.  Trade with China brought Chinese pottery, which the Dutch adeptly learned to make for themselves in the mid 1600’s.

The old church has the same problem as Dordrecht - the clock tower is obviously leaning.

They must have figured out the foundation issues before starting the new church.  Trust me, it’s straight - even if the pic is slightly crooked.

Across the square is the town hall.

Then I made my way across town to the old factory (still in use) where Delftware is sill hand painted.

The paint is actually black when it is applied to the fired shapes, but turns blue when items are re-fired after painting and glazing.

They even do custom tile murals.  This one is a massive replica of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ utilizing 480 tiles, and took 2 master painters a solid year to complete

Then I made my way out to the gift shop and discovered how expensive this hand painted Delftware is.  That’s 86 Euros ($128) for a small house that you could fit twice in the palm of your hand.

Although I did manage to find something for mom under $50

Today was a cold day, but that didn’t prevent me from taking a walking tour of the capital of the Netherlands.  The trains were back in order, so it only took 40 minutes to get to The Hague.  The Tourist Information center had a booklet of a self guided walking tour that highlights the architecture of the city.  Since most of the museums are closed on Mondays, I opted for the walk - which was fine, there’s plenty to see…

The tour takes you by new and old government offices, churches, and shopping centers dating as far back as the 1300’s, and as recent as 1996 - with most of the interesting buildings in the 1700’s and 1800’s.

The skinniest house in the Netherlands.  Similar to CIncinnati in the 20’s, The Hague taxes property based on lenght of street frontage…  So owning a house on an inside corner (max frontage for minimal area) was a sign of extreme wealth.  In the meantime, people crammed small houses in wherever they could.

The Hague is 750 years old.  There has been a lot of growth since the 1800’s.  In 1850 the population was 75,000.  Today it’s almost 500,000… so there’s a constant mix of old and new…

Below, the gold fountain is from the late 1800’s, but the ‘Knight’s Hall’ in the background was started in the 1300’s and is the largest Gothic building in Europe that isn’t a church.

From the back side of the administrative complex (including the spire from the Knight’s Hall) - looking over the lake toward the Grote Kerk  - supposodly one of the prettiest city views in Holland.

The Grote (big) Market street.

Driving in the dark last night, Ingrid promised me that the hostel was in the middle of a nature preserve.  She was not lying… when I got downstairs the next day for breakfast (after a ‘refreshing’ cold shower), there was a nice view of dawn over the canals.  I went for a walk thru part of the park.

After I got back to the hostel, I tried texting Ingrid to no avail.  She was apparently in church with her friend.  So I found a map of the area and decided to walk to the city center for the Christmas market.  I didn’t realize it was roughly 6 miles from the nature park to the city center.  Luckilly, I caught a bus a little after 1/2 way - because my daypack was loaded with toiletries, my PC, a change of clothes, books, etc…  it weighted about 20 pounds (9 kilos) and I was getting tired.

I made it into town and the Christmas market was hopping.  People everywhere - and lucky for me, food vendors.  I started with Dutch Fries.  Note:  ‘French’ fries were actually developed in the Flanders area of Belgium, and the fries in Belgium and Holland are fried twice, then have the sauce (usually mayo or mayo with mustard) slopped on top, then eaten with a small fork or toothpick.   Just past the kiosk with the fries, there was a place serving hot ham and mustard sandwiches on fresh baked bread… so I had to have one of those too.

Then I just people watched for a while.

I wandered thru the market to the Grote Kerk (big church).  Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland.  Holland is actually a kind of county within the Netherlands.  It’s just tourists that call the entire country Holland.  Being the oldest city, they were the first to be able to build their own church independant of outside rulers.  It also has near perfect acoustics to carry the sounds that eminate from the bell tower.

Speaking of the bell/clock tower, I climbed it.  The tower is actually about 7 ft off plumb and is kept from falling with a 26.5 million pound counterweight on the Northwest side.  I didn’t learn that until after I climbed it…

And looking back on the old town of Dordrecht with the river in the background.

Then back to the fair to take in some of the street musicians and some Glühwein (hot wine).

I eventually got bored with the market and wandered the old town.  Just before sunset I caught a nice shot looking back at the clock tower.

After a few phone calls where I completely failed to explain where I was, I met up with Ingrid and her friend for a while.  They were going to her friend’s house for dinner.  I had been snacking all day, so I cruised the market for a while longer before meeting Ingrid back at her place around 8 PM.

So on Friday I decided to recover from 4 days of walking tours and museums.  I slept in, went to lunch with Ingrid and some of her co-workers, posted the Belgium update on the blog. I looked into going to Berlin, but it was going to be cold, so I decided on Madrid (warm and cheaper). Then Ingrid got off work and we went out on the town.

First we stopped by her home town and had dinner with her parents.

I had a great time chatting with her parents.  Her dad is a big whiskey and cigar aficionado (even after his recent heart attack), and he likes rowing and old cars, and they drove route 66 a few years ago, so we had plenty to talk about.  Her dad recommended Barcelona over Madrid, so I decided to book that instead.

After a great meal, we went back to Dordrecht.  I booked Barcelona,  and we caught the train to Breda - the local college party town.  We had a 30 minute wait in the station, so we made some goofy videos on my camera to entertain ourselves.  I’ll post a few when I get them edited…  In Breda we met a bunch of Ingrid’s friends and former co-corkers at her previous job.  Went dancing and drinking until about 4:30 AM.

When we got to the train station around 5 AM, the tracks were being maintained on our planned route, and the next train wasn’t until 7:30 AM.  So we stayed at one of her friends houses (the guy on the right) for a few hours.  I was exceptionally tired with a light hangover.

Around 9 AM we caught a train back to Dordrecht.  Ingrid fell asleep.  I had breakfast and had to get ready for my 1:40 PM flight to Barcelona.  The train is usually 45 minutes between Dordrecht and the airport, so I left at 11:00 to catch the 11:12 inter-city.  NOPE!  The work on the tracks had screwed everything up.  It took me 2 and a half hours to get to the airport - just as they closed the gate on my non-refundable $220 flight.  I spent an hour or so unsuccessfully trying to get a refund on the airport taxes, then another 2.5 hours to get back to Dordrecht - where I fell promptly asleep.

About 2 hours later Ingrid woke me up and said that since her apartment has open access to the doctors office where she works, part of her ‘rental’ agreement was that friends are not allowed to stay there without her… and she still had plans to go out drinking and crash at her friend’s house.  She found a nearby hostel for me.  Decent enough, $30 and clean. No hot water in my shower - that kinda sucked.

Literally, the only good thing about that day was that my iPod battery lasted exactly long enough for me to get back to Ingrid’s place.  I seriously thought about and looked into catching the next plane home - but it was a $250 change fee and $600 fare difference.  Ouch!!

Despite a snoring Frenchman in my room (earplugs are awsome), I got about 12 great hours of sleep and feel pretty good today.  Ingrid’s having more friends over to chill out today - since she was planning on me being away.  I’ll probably check the train schedules and see when the track maintenance will be done - and plan my remaining day-trips in Holland and possibly visiting Kirsten in Cologne, Germany.  We’ll see…

As a tourist in Belgium, you’ll see waffle shops, chocolate shops, chocolate waffle shops, museums, waffle shops, bars, chocolate shops, a few canals, the occasional handmade lace shop, and more waffle and chocolate shops. 

I think the only way these people are still skinny is that they walk or bike everywhere - even in cold, drizzling weather.  I´m pretty sure we could solve America´s weight issues by forcing everyone to just walk for 1 mile a day - then replace the plethora of medeocre fast food joints with gourmet bistros.

Before you see too many of these pics, I had to use the high ISO settings on the Olympus, so some of the night shots (like the one above) have a lot of noise artifacting.

I arrived in Brussels around 11AM on Wednesday and immediately started looking for a cheap room.  Now, since this town is the seat of the European Union, hotels are about 120€ (or $180).  I found a hostel dorm for $30 that was just a short walk from the city center.  Back toward town, I happened by the famous statue of the little boy peeing.  He’s surprizingly small for such a famous statue - under 2ft tall.

Then on to the very interresting Musical Instrument Museum.  I won’t bore you with pics of all the different instruments, but it has some reall odd ones mixed in with ones you would expect.  There was a very cool audio tour included where as you stand on marked spots on the floor, your headphones play sounds from the instrument you´re currently viewing.

And on to an exhibitt of Magritte - the Flemish surrealist.  As always, no photography allowed in the museum, but this should give you an idea of his work…

Once I left there, it was getting dark, so I went for a meal and some people-watching in the town square. 

As you can imagine, the capital of the EU had a lot of really neat little bistro´s.

Unfortunately my surfing buddy Arnaud had to work late and couldn’t meet me for drinks, but I found an interresting little bar with live music, good beer, and a greasy pickpocket rifling thru other people’s jackets.  The hostel locked up at 1 AM, so I had to get back and get some sleep.

FYI- the band was a ukelele, guitar, acoustic bass, drummer, and trombone player - and they were pretty darn good.

The next morning I took the train to Brugge, stashed my bag in a locker at the train station, and decided to climb the city bell tower.  They have a 15 Euro pass that is good for all the Brugge city museums, like 20 of them…. And it the tower had a nice view of the town. 

At the base of the tower was a small exhibit on Salvador Dali.  Man, that guy was messed up and full of himself.

Then I wandered to the town hall.  You can see the bell tower in the background.  The dark building in the corner on the left is the Basilica of the Holy Blood which contains a bit of what is supposed to be Christ´s blood preserved by Joseph of Arimithea shortly after his death, and given to a crusading knight in the 1150´s.

Then I wandered around town a bit to see the scenic canals.

After dark, I checked out the Christmas Market at the town square - which has a decent ice skating rink in the center… to I rented some skates and went for a slide.

Ingrid was having a late dinner with a friend, so I was in no hurry to catch the train.  I found a little bar and had 2 things that you can´t get in the USA…  Paddy Irish Whiskey, and a Cuban Cigar!

Finally, it was time to catch the train, but I got one last decent picture on the way out of town.

On the way back, I had a layover in the massive and modern Antwerp train station.

Ingrid´s train was arriving about an hour after mine, so I found a bar around the corner from her place and shared a few drinks with some locals before she finally arrived.  Then it was off to a long winter´s nap…

Friday night Ingrid and I are going out with a few of her friends.  Prior to the festivities, my task is to figure out what I´m doing the rest of the weekend and next week.  Saturday night Ingrid has plans to stay over with a friend in another city who will apparently freak if an American guy comes along.  That kinda puts me in a hard spot for lodging, but I´m trying to meet with some more of my friends from MojoSurf camp, or possibly Mandy from New Zealand.  Jenny in Dublin is busy until Sunday, so that won´t work.  I´m thinking if I can´t confirm with any of my friends (and find a place to crash) by tonight, I´ll probably book a last minute trip to Berlin.  Bummer I didn´t bring my ski bibs, or I´d go to the Alps.